


Creature Fear

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Erwin Smith, Child Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Childhood Friends, Eventual Levi/Erwin Smith, Falling In Love, Ghost Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Imaginary Friends, Innocence, Kid Fic, Light Angst, Light-Hearted, M/M, Moving, Paranormal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5796940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a move to a farmhouse in the New England countryside, Erwin Smith finds some of the previous inhabitant's possessions in a closet under the stairs. </p><p>Tags updated as story progresses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Classiplier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Classiplier/gifts).



“Do we really have to move?” Erwin whined and pouted, though he’d never admit it, kicking at the back of his father’s seat. It was a moot point, though; the old Honda minivan had already pulled up to the front of the farmhouse that Erwin’s father joyfully called their new house. Erwin refused to think of it as such; that would make it too permanent, and in his little eight-going-on-nine year old heart, he was still holding tight to the belief that it was all a big mistake, his father would be given back his teaching position at the University of San Francisco, and they’d be laughing about it on the long drive back home.

“Don’t be like that,” his father said, smiling gently as he opened Erwin’s door. “Come on, why don’t we go and see your new bedroom, what do you say, buddy? I’ll bet you it’s a lot bigger than your old one!”

Erwin crossed his arms tightly over his chest, but hopped out of the car anyway. The gravel of the driveway crunched beneath the soles of his shoes as he followed his father desolately up to the front door. The moving van full of their things pulled up next to their car with an exhausted sigh; Erwin knew exactly how it felt. It had taken them ages to transport everything from one end of the country to the other, and Erwin was achy and cramped from sitting cooped up in the backseat, squeezed in next to cardboard boxes of his father’s books. He hadn’t even had his favorite Captain America figurine to distract him. It had gotten packed away in one of the boxes, somewhere, and, finally caving in to his relentless pouting and begging, Erwin’s father had bought him a new one in a store halfway through Kansas. But it wasn’t nearly the same, and Erwin only held it dejectedly as the fields and buildings and fields again whipped by the window.

His father was fumbling with the keys to the front door, and finally got it open as Erwin trudged up the creaking wooden steps. They were in a state of disrepair, the planks starting to rot soft beneath Erwin’s shoes, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. He missed their apartment in San Francisco fiercely, with the doorman named Rosso who always gave Erwin a butterscotch candy when he came home from school and the fuzzy teacup Yorkie in 137B who had a different sweater for every day of the week. San Francisco had his friends and his classmates and his favorite teachers, and Erwin glared at a network of cobwebs that were knit silvery through the beams of the porch rails as though they were singlehandedly to blame for the move to the New England countryside.

The inside of the new house looked like one of those fixer-upper houses that Erwin’s mother had liked to watch: the wallpaper was peeling in spots, faded in others, and the floorboards were warped and creaky as Erwin stepped over the threshold. Dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight that trickled in through smudged windows, and Erwin had to stifle a sneeze or two as he followed his father up the staircase to look at his new bedroom.

His father had been right; the bedroom was much bigger than the one he’d had in San Francisco, with its own bathroom attached on the side. Here, like in all the other rooms that Erwin had seen, the dusty, floral-patterned wallpaper was peeling at the corners of the room, and he resolved to ask to paint over it as soon as possible. His footsteps echoed through the still, empty house as he ran over to the large window seat looking out into their massive, overgrown backyard, and he had to clamber onto it, the wood digging into his knees through his jeans as he peered out the lower panes. There were no fences as far as his eye could see, and their backyard went on forever to join up with the gently rolling hills beyond, now carpeted with gold from the recent dry spells that had been washing over the east coast. There were still two months of summer vacation left, and Erwin’s imagination went a hundred miles a minute, thinking of all the adventures he could have, of all the space that he had to play in –

His train of thought was interrupted by his father, clapping a hand on Erwin’s shoulder and smiling apologetically down at him. “What do you think, bud? Do you like it?” Erwin forced a smile onto his face and nodded; he could tell his father was trying his best, and didn’t want to disappoint him any more than he could help. Erwin’s father exhaled a sigh of relief, pushing up his glasses further on the bridge of his nose. “I’ll go get the movers to bring your stuff up here so you can start getting settled in.”

Erwin nodded, and returned to looking out the window. The house creaked around him and filled with the voices and footsteps of the workmen’s boots as they huffed and grunted their way up the stairs, depositing Erwin’s belongings in his room under his father’s directions. There was a lopsided-looking tree house built in the branches of an oak tree in their backyard, with planks for climbing nailed into the trunk, like in many of the books Erwin had read in school. The thought of having adventures and running around outside without having to watch out for cars or bicycles was exciting, and it was almost enough to make him forget his loneliness.

* * *

 

He and his father went to a Denny’s in town for dinner that night, and though his father didn’t usually let him eat breakfast for dinner, Erwin managed to get away with ordering a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with extra whipped cream. As he jabbed forkfuls of pancake into his mouth, Erwin thought perhaps his father was more apologetic than he was letting on, and resolved to try and make as many requests as he could before his father’s guilt dissolved.

His father must have been feeling particularly generous, or particularly guilty, or perhaps a mixture of the two, because he barely paused to think about Erwin’s requests before accepting them. Blue and white paint for Erwin’s bedroom? No problem. A thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of the Milky Way galaxy Erwin had seen online? Sure. Repairing the tree house in the backyard and making sure it was stable enough to play in and have a secret hideout in? Of course.

The pancakes made him feel uncomfortably full and tired, and Erwin was fast asleep in the backseat by the time they got home. With a small smile, Erwin’s father reached in to pluck Erwin out of his seat and carried him into the house, not even waking him up to brush his teeth before tucking him into bed with a soft kiss and an apology brushed against Erwin’s forehead.


	2. Chapter 2

When Erwin woke up the next morning, he was disoriented. The sun was streaming in through the large windows in beams that warmed his limbs even through his blanket, and birds were tweeting merrily outside. In confusion, he strained to hear the familiar sounds of cars honking outside, the shout of the pretzel vendor in the early morning advertising the twisted knots of dough that he made fresh in his cart on the corner. None of those sounds wafted through the window, and when Erwin turned his head to look outside, he found the branches of the oak tree waving enticingly at him, the roof of the tree house just barely visible over the window frame.

His stomach dropped. Oh. So it hadn’t just been a bad dream, then. He and his father were truly here, in a farmhouse in New Hampshire, and no amount of pleas and wishes could turn back the clock. He kicked his sheets off; since waking up, the room seemed to have gone stiflingly hot all too quickly, and the floorboards were lovely and cool beneath the heels of his bare feet. Erwin was still dressed in his clothes from yesterday, but he paid it no mind as he skittered down the stairs to look for his father. He was itching to see a familiar face.

* * *

 

“Oh, hey there, kiddo!” Erwin’s father smiled up at him, his glasses smudged with dust and dirt as he wiped at his forehead with a rag he stuffed back into his pocket. “How did you sleep?”

“I slept okay,” Erwin replied. “Can I have breakfast?”

His father tilted his head over to the kitchen. “I think there’s some cereal and milk in there somewhere,” he said, turning back to unwrapping the several layers of plastic and bubble wrap that entombed their living room furniture. He handed Erwin a sheet of bubble wrap, and Erwin clutched it to his chest, a small smile sparking on his face as it popped underneath his fingers. He almost forgot he was supposed to be angry at his father. “After I finish getting all this crud off,” here, Erwin’s father tossed several sheets of already unwrapped plastic into the air, making Erwin giggle, “we’ll go out for lunch. But in the meantime, why don’t you go play outside, have some adventures while I finish up here. How about that?”

“Okay,” Erwin agreed, and scooping up another two sheets of bubble wrap that trailed behind him like the tails of a robe, he ran into the kitchen to pour himself a bowl of cereal. He found the box of cereal and jug of milk in the fridge easily enough, and chewed at his corn flakes while popping the bubbles in the wrap. Sunlight streaked across the floor, painting at his toes, and he swung his chubby legs back and forth while he ate.

Once his spoon was scraping against the bottom of the bowl, Erwin hopped up to put it into the sink before running back up the stairs to tug on socks and shoes. The heat of early summer wasn’t too bad yet, and though he missed Mike and Zoey and the other kids at school, he was already starting to forget their faces. The world stretched out before him open and wild and full of adventure, and Erwin determined to make the best of it that he could.

He was about to skid out the door when Erwin’s father called him back in. “Did you brush your teeth?” he demanded, but his tone was playful instead of angry.

“No,” Erwin admitted sheepishly, and with a grin, his father herded him back up the stairs and made sure he spent the full two minutes brushing his teeth before letting him out into the back garden.

* * *

 

Once outside, Erwin made a beeline for the tree house he’d spotted yesterday. The ground sloped gently beneath the soles of his light-up sneakers as he ran, the tall unmown grass whispering around his ankles. The shadow of the oak tree was soft and cool as it towered over him, and Erwin craned his neck back to look up at the tree house. From this angle, he could see the hatch that led into it from the laddered planks on the trunk, and curiosity got the better of him.

Cautiously, Erwin tugged at the first plank. It seemed pretty steady still, and, carefully, carefully Erwin stood on tiptoes to tug at the second plank. The wooden slats stayed firmly affixed to the tree trunk, and throwing caution to the wind, Erwin scrambled up the planks. Splinters dug themselves into his palms and the heels of his hands as he hauled himself up into the tree house, and a wayward branch scratched at his cheek rather painfully, but the pain was quickly forgotten as Erwin looked out the crudely fashioned window of the tree house. From here, he could peer into his bedroom and look at the rooftop of the farmhouse. Dry leaves piled up in the gutters and storm pipes that ran around the roof, and even as Erwin watched, they began to skitter gently against the metal and across the shingles with a light breeze that had started up. The wind kissed against his ruddy cheeks, lifting his blonde hair into a halo, and he imagined all the adventures he could have up here.

It could be a pirate ship, sailing though the cloudy swells of the seven seas, with a trusty bag of jam-slathered crackers at his side and a trusty paper towel roll telescope. It could be a spaceship soaring through the sky, blasting down Martians and other strange life forms. It could even be the Millennium Falcon! The possibilities were endless, and Erwin was excited running through all of them in his head.

The days of summer vacation stretched out long and endless before him, a green carpet running all the way to eternity, and though Erwin longed for a playmate or someone to share his adventures with, he found himself thinking that perhaps the move might not be so bad after all.

* * *

 

By the time his father finished setting up the living room and kitchen, Erwin’s stomach was grumbling with hunger and he scurried down the plank ladder when his father stepped out on the back porch, hands on his hips, calling for Erwin to come inside, they were going to lunch.

“That looks like a pretty neat tree house, doesn’t it, bud?” his father asked, smiling kindly down at Erwin. His glasses still had streaks of dust and dirt on them, his whiskered cheeks glowing with the exertions of the morning. Erwin nodded, agreeably. “I had one of those in my backyard when I was growing up.”

“Back in olden times?” Erwin piped up, and his father laughed heartily, reaching up to wipe away his tears of mirth.

“Yes, back in olden times,” he agreed, taking Erwin by the hand and leading him outside to their minivan to head into town for lunch.

* * *

 

Over lunch in a little retro diner Erwin had particularly liked the black-and-white checked floor of, Erwin’s father cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Erwin.

“Got some splinters there, I see,” he said, frowning and peering over the metal rims of his glasses at Erwin’s palms. The splinters were dark spots in Erwin’s rosy skin. “We’ll have to take them out later at home. Did you get them from going up into the tree house?”

Erwin nodded, chewing at a mouthful of hamburger and chasing it down with a swallow of chocolate milkshake. “Does it hurt?” he asked curiously. “Taking the splinters out?”

“A bit,” his father agreed, sawing off another bite of his steak and popping it into his mouth. “But you’re a big boy, right? You can be brave?”

“I can be brave!” Erwin crowed triumphantly, shoving a French fry into his mouth. “I am a big boy, really I am!”

His father smiled at his exuberance, and reached over to tousle at Erwin’s fine blonde hair. He resolved to make sanding and sealing down the tree house his next order of business, as he was sure it would be the site of many of Erwin’s adventures over the summer.

* * *

 

Later that night, after his father had hauled him out of the bath like a slippery seal and wrapped him in a fuzzy towel, Erwin sat down on the closed porcelain lid of the toilet and held out his palms for his father’s inspection. Several splinters dotted the skin, and Erwin’s father winced in sympathy as he laid out a pair of tweezers that he’d sterilized while Erwin had been taking a bath along with some cotton swabs and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

The first splinter didn’t hurt so much, and not even the second one, but Erwin felt tears pricking at his eyes as his father began to work the third one out. This one was embedded deeper in his skin, and the sting of it was sharp as a pin. Erwin’s father looked up at him, his eyebrows knit in worry.

“Hey, it’s alright, buddy,” he said, comfortingly. “After we get them all out, you can put one of your DVDs into the player, okay? For being so brave.”

Erwin sniffled miserably, and chewed at his cheek as his father finished tugging out the splinters. He gently swabbed Erwin’s palms with hydrogen peroxide, and that really got Erwin sobbing, as though his heart had been broken. After winding Erwin’s hands with bandages and pressing kisses to his flushed, chubby cheeks, Erwin’s sobs started to quiet, and, in mere minutes, the whole pain of the ordeal was gone, forgotten in his childlike determination to look forward.

“Better now?” his father asked, smiling down at him, and Erwin nodded, rubbing at his eyes to make sure all the tears were gone. “What movie do you want to watch?”

“Cars,” Erwin said, definitively. It was a particular favorite of his, and though he’d easily seen bright red Lightning McQueen racing around the track dozens of times, his father only smiled good-naturedly and said he’d get it set up while Erwin got himself into his pajamas and brushed his teeth.

* * *

 

Erwin was about to join his father in the living room when the dark outline of a door under the staircase caught his eye. Curiosity itched through him. A mysterious door under the stairs? Maybe it could be another secret hideout; maybe he could pretend to be Harry Potter! Soon a letter would come from an owl, stuffed down the chimney and landing in Erwin’s breakfast cereal, informing him that he had been summoned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Erwin was fascinated and excited; it had been one of his dreams since he’d first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when he was six, with his father’s help.

But the longer he stood there, debating whether or not to go and open the door, fear and uncertainty started to win out. No, it was a silly thought; Erwin was too young to go to Hogwarts. The outline of the door loomed ominously out at him now. Maybe there were monsters in there, waiting for Erwin to open the door and let them out, monsters with eight legs and glowing red eyes and huge sharp fangs perfect for ripping a little boy like Erwin to pieces –

The very thought of that had Erwin running to his father in the living room and burrowing his head into his father’s side. The Cars DVD menu played over their television, and he was comforted by the familiar start-up music combined with his father’s hand rubbing gentle circles into his back, warm through the thin cotton of his nightshirt.

“What’s wrong, then, bud?” Erwin’s father asked. “You alright?”

“The closet under the stairs,” Erwin said frankly, sitting up and looking his father squarely in the eye. “I think there’s monsters in it.”

“Oh?” To his credit, there was only a small twinkle of amusement in his father’s eyes. “Well, let me go and check, okay? Why don’t you get the show rolling?” He handed Erwin the television remote. “I’ll make sure none of those bad, ugly monsters can come out to get you.”

Erwin nodded fearfully, his eyes still riveted on his father as he watched him make his way across the room. The sound of a door creaking open on old hinges sent a chill running up his spine, and for a second that felt like an eternity, Erwin thought that perhaps whatever was in the closet had come out to eat his father and swallow him whole, like the monsters that had come to eat his mother from the inside out. They’d dug into her chest, eating her away in little bites and pieces, and her hair had fallen out and her cheeks had become hollow and –

“Dad?” he called, a quaver in his voice, desperate to turn his thoughts to something else. “Daddy, are you okay?”

Much to his relief, his father came walking back into the room a minute later, rubbing his hands on the thighs of his jeans before plopping down next to Erwin again. Solid. Comforting. Real.

“No monsters, kiddo,” he said, with a shrug, pushing up his glasses on the bridge of his nose and indicating for Erwin to start the movie. “There’s some old boxes in there that might have belonged to the previous owner. You can go look at it tomorrow if you’d like; maybe you’ll find some interesting stuff.”

“Maybe,” Erwin agreed uncertainly, sure that he wouldn’t find anything worth mentioning. After all, how interesting could the stuff have been if they’d left it behind? Not that much, Erwin thought. “I’ll look in the morning.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan,” his father said, smiling as he pressed a kiss to the part of Erwin’s hair, still damp from his bath.

By the time Lightning McQueen had puttered his way into Radiator Springs, Erwin was already fast asleep, his cheek pressed into his father’s thigh. A small patch of drool dampened the fabric of his jeans, and Erwin’s father smiled obligingly as he scooped Erwin up and put him to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

Erwin sneezed, once, twice, as he pulled open the door to the closet under the stairs. It creaked, squealing on its rusty hinges, and morning sunlight streamed in through the windows behind Erwin, falling across the cardboard boxes pushed against the wall. His father had been right. There were no monsters in the closet, and Erwin giggled at his childish fears of the night before. Admittedly, the closet looked a lot more approachable in the near-blinding light of day, with the faint sounds of birds chirping outside and his father whistling somewhere in the garage where he was setting up his workbench, but Erwin chose to believe that he had miraculously grown braver overnight. That’s what happened to the superheroes in some comic books, at least.

Stifling the urge to sneeze again, Erwin walked into the closet to pick up the nearest box. For a brief moment, he was terrified that the closet door would slam shut, hinges shrieking, behind him, locking him in forever. His father wouldn’t be able to hear him shouting and banging from the other side of the door, and in time, Erwin would slowly waste away like a boy he’d seen in a horror movie on late-night television once when his mother and father had thought he was fast asleep. He’d be all but forgotten, trapped in here with some other person’s things.

But, of course, the door didn’t snap shut on him, and Erwin was able to push the box out into the hallway. Straightening, Erwin squinted at the faded handwriting on one of the top flaps of the box. It was written in thick, black marker, with a shaky, childish hand much like the one Erwin used to write cursive in. ‘Levi’s Room’ was scrawled across the flap, and Erwin wondered absentmindedly who Levi was as he tugged fruitlessly at the thick strips of masking tape that sealed the box closed.

Giving up after a few rough yanks at the sticky strips, Erwin ran off to the garage to find his father to ask for help.

His father was searching through his toolbox when Erwin opened the door to the garage. “Hey there! Good morning!” his father said, smiling up at Erwin. He hadn’t shaved yet, by the looks of it, and a crop of dusty gold stubble grew on the sharp lines of his jaw, itching against Erwin’s skin as his father walked over and bent down to lay a kiss on his forehead. “Sleep well?”

Erwin nodded quickly. “Can you open the box from the closet for me?” he asked, cutting right to business. “The tape is too strong.”

“Sure, of course,” his father replied easily, heading back to his toolbox to ge a box cutter and stretching languidly as he followed Erwin’s quick footsteps back into the house. Though it was but ten o’clock, and the garage was relatively cool, the late May sunshine was still scorching hot, and Erwin was fanning himself with his hands by the time his father caught up.

“Levi, huh?” Erwin’s father asked as he squatted down by his son to examine the box. It looked innocuous enough, the weight inside of a decent, solid heft, books or something equally as heavy. The box cutter’s blade schicked softly as he pressed open the knife, and the tape sighed in ripping bursts as he dragged the tip of the blade through the adhesive.

Together, Erwin and his father peered into the dusty depths of the box. Erwin reached down to peel apart the flaps so they could see better, and together, they examined the contents. Erwin’s father had been right; a pile of books had been stacked haphazardly inside, leather journals and composition notebooks and novels whose covers had already faded away.

“That’s Harry Potter!” Erwin burst out, grinning and all but shoving his arms headlong into the box to pull out a tattered, well-worn copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The spine was all but falling apart, and several of the pages were dog-eared and folded over at the corners, but a closer inspection showed that none of the pages were torn or missing or sticky with jammy fingers. Signs of a book many times read and well-loved. An inscription was written in soft pencil on the title page, and Erwin mouthed the words to himself as he traced the curves of the letters with his finger.

“To Levi. Love, Mommy.” A little smiley face followed. Not for the first time, Erwin felt his thoughts pinch tight, his stomach curling into a knot as he thought about his own mother. He looked uneasily towards his father, who smiled benevolently at him; Erwin’s gaze fixed on the golden chain his father wore around his neck. Erwin knew a shiny coin about the size of a quarter hung from the chain, knew that part of his mother’s ashes was in there, and the thought made him squeamish every time he was reminded of his mother. He turned his stare quickly away to look through the books some more.

“Well, kiddo, I’m gonna go finish getting the garage set up,” Erwin’s father said, sighing heavily as he got back up to his feet. “You okay here? Hungry or thirsty or anything like that?”

“No,” Erwin said, smiling brightly, forcefully, up at his father. “I’m okay.”

“Alright, then,” his father replied, ruffling his hair and making it stand on end. “I’ll be just outside if you need me.” Then, as though reminded, he continued, “And don’t go up into the tree house anymore, not until I’ve sanded everything down for you. Alright? We wouldn’t want to be getting any more splinters, would we?”

“Okay,” Erwin agreed, unconsciously curling his hands into fists. Though his hands didn’t hurt nearly as much as they had yesterday, they were still tender to the touch. His father’s footsteps faded away as he walked whistling down the hallway; the door to the garage opened and closed with a soft sucking sound, and Erwin was alone in the house again.

Childlike curiosity gripped him, and he turned back to the books they’d just discovered. Maybe Levi had the rest of the Harry Potter series in here? Erwin wondered eagerly to himself as he plopped down on the hardwood floor and began to riffle through the papers. He’d last read the third book in the series, but he couldn’t remember it; the memories of the characters and story line blurred into a single pinprick of memory.

His voice had seemed to echo around his mother’s hospital room as he read the sentences to her in a high, quavery voice that he hated; it made him sound like a baby, and he had been seven going on eight, then. Far too old to be crying. Erwin had swiped at his tears with the back of his sleeve, had looked surreptitiously up at his mother to make sure she couldn’t see him sobbing. She hadn’t been looking, not in days and days and days, drifting in and out of a haze of something that his father told him would make Mommy not feel the monsters anymore.

Erwin thumbed through the pages in this copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban. A light dust rose up from the pages as he flipped through rapidly, and a bookmark clattered out onto the floor, its silky tassel crumpled and creased from a long period of disuse. It had fallen out from somewhere halfway through the middle of the book; clearly this Levi person hadn’t finished it, either, and that thought gave Erwin some measure of comfort.

He set the book aside on the floor for later, digging through the other dusty volumes. His imagination danced away from him, and he began to fancy himself an archaeologist, excavating the artifacts of an ancient time. He put on his best British accent, one he’d painstakingly copied from television and Minecraft videos on YouTube, as he dug through the contents, announcing each and every one to his invisible audience.

A science textbook that Erwin recognized as one he’d used in the third grade became a chronicle of medicine that the ancient peoples had used to educate their young about the world and diseases.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, this one with the same loving inscription, became a book of myths and legends. Erwin was unable to find Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but thought it might have been in one of the other boxes in the closet behind him.

“And this, look carefully now,” he instructed an invisible camera as he held up a little leather-bound book, “these are records of transactions so we can discover how the ancient people traded and ate and stuff.” His dutiful narration finished, Erwin flipped through the little journal.

The journal fell gently open to a creased page as though that page had been turned to many times before. “April 2, 2008,” was written at the top in dark blue ink; the ink had smudged slightly across the lines from someone pressing their hand down to write across the paper, and there were some spots where the paper had turned translucent in small spots, as though someone had accidentally dribbled water over the page.

“Dear Diary,” the page began. A blush crept up on Erwin’s face; it felt too personal, too private, to be reading through someone else’s diary, even if they hadn’t come back for it and would probably never come back for it, and he closed the book quickly, setting it to the side. He picked through the rest of the books, but his archaeological fantasy had been shattered already, and there was nothing else of interest inside. Some dried up watercolors, a few scattered brushes whose bristles had seen much better days, and used grammar exercise books littered the bottom of the box, and Erwin ignored them.

His gaze turned back to the journal he’d set aside.

Surely this person wouldn’t mind, right? Erwin thought uneasily to himself as he reached out for the journal again. It was just a diary of a person he didn’t know, and sometimes reading diaries was okay. Encouraged, even; all the sixth graders at Erwin’s old elementary school had to read The Diary of Anne Frank. Surely this couldn’t be too different.

Satisfied with his own explanation, Erwin took the journal in hand again, where it fell open to the same page in the middle of the book. “April 2, 2008.”

The writing was jagged in some places, squeezed in others, but it was the same handwriting that had been used for the box’s label. “Dear Diary, Mommy took me to the doctor’s office today. She said they would not give me a shot. They gave me a shot. A big one, and it hurt a lot! I didn’t cry, but Mommy did, lots and lots.”

The entry ended there, short and abruptly. Erwin could sympathize. He hated getting his shots and vaccinations at the doctor’s office, and Levi’s words sent a spasm of fear into his heart. He’d probably have to get shots himself before he started school here, and there was that flu shot he’d have to get in the fall, the one his father had to bribe him into getting every year.

He flipped to the next entry, trying to distract himself from the thought of certainly impending doom.

“April 3, 2008. Dear Diary, Mommy has been on the telephone for a long time. She said she’s talking to Uncle Kenny, but when I ask to talk to him she says I can’t. She says they’re talking about adult busyness. It sounds boring. Mommy let me watch DVDs all day, and I watched Cars and Finding Nemo and Toy Story, 1, 2, and 3!”

Erwin loved those movies, and the fact that Levi had put Cars first made Erwin smile. That was his favorite movie, too! Like his third grade teacher might have said, Levi was a sym-pa-thet-ic character, someone you could relate to and understand really well. Erwin closed the journal gently, with a soft pat to its cover, and set it aside with Levi’s worn copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban. He piled the other books neatly back into the box, before closing the flaps and nudging it back into the closet.

There were three or four other boxes of Levi’s belongings in the closet, and making a mental note to explore through them another day, Erwin took the books to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of orange juice and began to read.

* * *

 

“What’ve you got there, buddy?” Erwin’s father asked when he came in to make them lunch, washing his hands quickly and wiping them on a kitchen towel. Their grilled cheese sandwiches sizzled gently in the skillet, and tomato soup bubbled quietly in a pot on the stove.

“Harry Potter,” Erwin said, holding up the tattered copy of the novel. “And this diary.”

“Haven’t you already read that book?” his father asked, squinting through his dusty glasses at the faded cover. “I thought you had.”

Erwin shrugged, sipping at his orange juice and turning a page. “I read it to Mommy, but I don’t remember what happened.”

Erwin’s father paused. She had passed away just a bit over a year ago, now, but the pain of it was still just as jarring, still able to sweep away his breath at the slightest thought of it. He wondered if Erwin remembered her, if he remembered the way she smelled like lilies of the valley, if he remembered how her laugh sounded like wind chimes –

Erwin’s father was jolted rudely back to his senses by the smell of burning. The sandwiches were smoking slightly on the skillet, and he hurriedly took them off the heat. The bread was charred on the bottom, and with a sigh and a forced smile back at his son, Erwin’s father tossed out the ruined sandwiches and pulled out the cheese and bread again.

* * *

 

“Hey, don’t stay up too late, okay?” Erwin’s father said, smiling as he ruffled his son’s slightly damp hair. Erwin was propped up in bed, the Harry Potter book still clutched tightly in his hands, his eyes scanning from one end of the page to the other as he read, mouthing the words to himself. “Hey, did you hear me?”

Erwin nodded furiously, not taking his eyes from the page. The journal he’d taken from the box rested on his nightstand, and Erwin’s father had riffled through it briefly, finding nothing particularly of interest. Erwin had insisted that Levi was a sym-pa-thet-ic character, whatever that meant, and his father had let him keep the journal. The previous owners certainly weren’t going to be coming back for it; the house had been on the market for years.

“Okay, then, good night,” Erwin’s father said, and Erwin finally, finally tore his eyes away from the page to allow his father to kiss his forehead before bed. “One more chapter, and then go to sleep, alright?”

Erwin nodded, attention already back on his book, and his father smiled to himself as he headed out of Erwin’s bedroom.

* * *

 

Hours later, when Erwin’s father went to check on him, he found the light still on, glowing a soft yellow under the crack of Erwin’s bedroom door. Opening the door slowly, softly, he found Erwin fast asleep, his limbs stretched out across his mattress in abandon, the spine of Harry Potter cracked over the gentle swell of his belly.

Holding his breath and tiptoeing softly across the floor, Erwin’s father gently plucked the book from Erwin’s stomach and slotted a faded bookmark with a red tassel into the pages where Erwin had left off. He placed the book on the nightstand, stacked neatly on top of the journal, and brushed another kiss across Erwin’s forehead before clicking off the lamp and tiptoeing out of the room again.

* * *

 

Erwin dreamt of his mother. It was a gentle, warm feeling, a dream that smelt like sunshine and blueberries and lilies, and her voice was soft and liquid as it surrounded him. His mother whispered to him gently that maybe he could try making friends with Levi. He was a sympathetic character, after all! Maybe he could be Erwin’s friend, and she certainly hoped he would be, because she didn’t like to see Erwin all grumpy when he couldn’t play with Mike or Zoey.

“Okay, sweetheart?” her voice whispered to him. A soft warmth stroked across his cheek, and he nuzzled into the touch, eyes widening as her slender hand came into view. The rest of her slowly faded into existence, more beautiful than he remembered. Her cheeks were full and rosy, her blue eyes bright, long tangles of curls spilling in waterfalls around her face. Laugh lines bracketed her mouth, and she caught Erwin’s wrist when he reached to pat his hands against her face, pressing kisses to his palm. “Don’t be a Mr. Grumpygills.”

She stood up, her gauzy white skirt swirling around her in a soft cloud, and Erwin’s gaze was drawn to a little boy with dark hair and darker eyes, peeking out from around her skirts. She nudged him forward, until Erwin could make out plump, rosy cheeks, a tightly pursed mouth, and chubby limbs with adorned with colorful Band Aids.

“This is Levi,” his mother said, smiling cheerfully. “And this is my son, Erwin,” she added, to the little boy standing by her side. “Say hello.”

Erwin waved, smiling with all he had. Levi peeked hesitantly at him before raising one of his hands to return the wave.

“I’ve got to go now, boys,” Erwin’s mother murmured, her whispers ruffles through Erwin’s hair. “But you two be good now, okay? Look after each other. I’ll see you soon.”

Erwin opened his mouth to ask his mother where she was going, when he would see her again, but then his father’s voice shattered through the quiet, asking him what he wanted for breakfast, and his mother and Levi disappeared as he opened his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

The excitement of setting up the new house didn’t last long, and not even the interest and intrigue of pawing through Levi’s things could keep Erwin distracted. He missed his friends and his teachers and the familiar sights and sounds and smells of San Francisco, but he tried not to complain too much. He could tell his father was trying his hardest, that he didn’t really have much of a choice, that jobs and the economy and money worked in strange ways that Erwin’s eight-year-old mind couldn’t grasp quite yet, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t homesick. The New England farmhouse had yet to feel like home to him, even though he’d already pulled out all his toys and books and arranged them in the same way they’d been before.

He watched his father strip the wallpaper in his room with a paper roll telescope from the window of the freshly sanded tree house. Erwin’s father had spent a good few days cramped in the tree house, sanding down each and every surface and staining it with a darker varnish so that Erwin’s fingertips glided smooth across the wood without any danger of getting splinters. His father was whistling, and every once in a while he’d smile and wave out at Erwin, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead. His whistles were interspersed with the call of birdsong and the ripping sounds of wallpaper peeling off the walls, and Erwin pretended the noises of peeling paper were the crashes of furious waves, that he was an intrepid explorer in the middle of the ocean, searching bravely for new lands over the horizon.

Using a large wooden stick he’d found a little ways away from the tree house, Erwin jabbed bravely at imaginary enemies, making swishing sounds with his mouth as his pretend blade cleaved through the air.

He won, every time, but he couldn’t help but think of how much more fun it would have been with Mike by his side. Tired and bored with his game already, Erwin pouted as he set the stick down with a clatter and opened Levi’s diary. If Levi’s accounts were anything to go by, he had been even lonelier than Erwin was, and even the small thought that someone had been worse off was enough to give Erwin some tiny measure of comfort. With his back propped against one of the walls, a breeze ruffled gently through his hair as he began to read, from the beginning this time.

“August 27, 2007. Mr. Zackley says we should all keep a journal of our thoughts and things. Stuff we did that day and what we ate and our favorite colors and things like that.” The entry was written in firmly pressed pencil; Erwin could trace the indents of the letters with his fingertip, and it still left smears of lead across his skin, years into the future. “My name is Levi Ackerman. I live at 1452 Cherry Lane, with my mommy Kuchel. My best friend’s name is Farlan but he moved away to do third grade at another school. My favorite color is blue. Today I ate a hot dog for dinner and it was very tasty.”

Erwin couldn’t help smiling. Why, but Levi sounded a lot like him! A very sympathetic character, and he wanted to tell his third grade teacher that he’d found someone he could truly relate to. His best friend had moved away, and he could imagine that Levi might have felt lost and alone as he wandered through the halls of the elementary school his father had showed him as they’d driven through the small quaint town earlier that week. It was a small cluster of buildings just off the main road of downtown, painted green with white trim, the playground a small square. The tetherballs swung limply on their poles; school was out of session, and the only activity on the blacktop that Erwin could see was a plastic bag tumbling across the asphalt.

He wasn’t looking forward to returning to school in August. There would be new teachers and new classmates, most of whom had probably known each other since preschool. He wondered if Levi had been friends with Farlan for a long time.

“August 28, 2007. We read a story today called Rapunzel. It is about a pretty girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes and a prince came on a white horse and he helped her run away.”

The summary reminded Erwin of his mother, and the dream he’d had about her a week or so ago. It had given him back a soft memory of her face, but that memory, too, was already starting to fade, blurring fuzzy around the edges. The pictures that they’d had of her had been put away, stored somewhere in the garage, and Erwin didn’t ask about them and his father never brought them up. What had she said to him? Erwin scratched a scab on his knee absentmindedly, trying to think.

Something about not missing his old friends or something like that. He read the next entry. This one had a picture, a rudimentary drawing of a stick figure boy in a purple shirt and blue shorts.

“This is me!” it was labeled, with a big crayon smiley face. A stick figure woman stood next to the boy, with long black hair and a yellow dress. “And this is Mommy.” This label had a heart next to it, and Erwin noted absentmindedly that this page was dog-eared, a bookmark to remind Levi or someone else that they’d particularly liked it. The paper also sported some of those translucent circles that had been on April 2, 2008, and Erwin rubbed at them, wondering what they were. “Mommy told me I should try to make more friends today, because she says she doesn’t like it when I am sad.”

Ah! That was it! Erwin let Levi’s diary fall into his lap, the pages rifling back to April 2, 2008. That was exactly what his mother had said to him! To try and make friends with Levi!

Erwin’s initial exhilaration faded as he realized that he had no idea where Levi was, and how he could be friends with him. That put a dampener on his plans, certainly.

As though hearing his thoughts, wind whispered gently through the windows of the tree house to flip through the thin pages. “April 17, 2008. Mommy brought me a lot of books while I stay in the hospitol. I am reading Harry Potter 3. I think Harry is my best friend now.”

Erwin smiled at the small misspelling, but couldn’t help but wonder about why Levi had been in the hospital in the first place. It must have been serious, if his mother had brought him a lot of books. But there was an idea; maybe he and Levi could be friends through his words. Maybe it was just his mother’s subtle way of telling him that he needed to read more, and maybe the stories would be able to take his mind off the loneliness he was feeling.

Erwin resolved to do his best, and his high, reedy voice read Levi’s words aloud, his chirping syllables mixing with his father’s whistling, the sounds of ripping wallpaper, and the birdsong outside.

* * *

 

“You sure like that diary, don’t you, kiddo?” Erwin’s father asked, smiling tenderly at his son as he tucked him into bed. Erwin and the dusty, tattered journal were inseparable, and he’d been hard pressed to try to convince Erwin to set it down long enough to take a shower and eat dinner. “Is Levi interesting?”

“He is,” Erwin agreed solemnly. The walls of his room stood bare, ready for a fresh coat of paint that he’d agreed to help his father with the next morning. “He likes blue, too! That’s his favorite color, just like me!”

Erwin’s father smiled, ruffling his son’s hair and leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’m sure he does, buddy,” he said, with a small grin. “Don’t stay up too late now, okay? You and Levi both need lots of sleep, since you’re growing boys.”

“Okay,” Erwin replied, nodding to show that he understood.

Despite this, eleven o’clock found Erwin’s father smiling with weary exasperation as he tiptoed into Erwin’s room to flick off the light. Erwin was sleeping deeply, soft snores rattling through his little body, and the journal lay closed on the pillow next to him, still clutched in his chubby fist. His father grinned fondly at him, and left the journal alone before extinguishing the light and moving off to his own bedroom.

* * *

 

“Your mommy said I should talk to you because you’re lonely and that’s why you’re reading my journal.”

Erwin peered through the mist of his dream to where a boy he recognized as inexplicably Levi was standing, hands on his hips. He was dressed in a purple shirt, and faded denim shorts. The toes of his shoes were scuffed and dirty. Erwin looked around for his mother, expecting to see her appear out of the mist at any moment. After all, she’d come before.

But, after several long moments during which she didn’t appear, Erwin had to concede that she wasn’t coming, and he turned to Levi with what he hoped was a friendly smile.

“I’m a bit lonely,” he admitted shyly, hoping that Levi wouldn’t be mad at him for reading his journal. Levi looked more curious than anything, and this gave Erwin some small comfort. “I just moved here.”

“At least you have a daddy,” Levi sniffed, coming over and plopping down next to Erwin. “Mommy says my daddy is gone already.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Erwin murmured, with a small frown as he tried to imagine what it would be like to not have his father. He’d probably have to go live with Uncle Stanley, whose dogs were smelly and barked very loudly at Erwin every time he went to visit with his mother. No, he concluded. Not having his father wouldn’t be very fun at all.

“You’re sleeping in my bedroom,” Levi said, going off on a different tangent altogether. “But it’s okay. I’m good at sharing!” He turned to Erwin, smiling proudly; he was missing one of his teeth, and looked like a particularly toothy jack-o-lantern. Erwin couldn’t help but giggle, and his laughing fit set off Levi as well. The childish laughter was comforting, and Erwin woke up the next morning with a bright smile on his face, the journal hugged tightly against his chest.


	5. Chapter 5

Ever since Erwin had gotten used to the idea of Levi being a regular occurrence in his dreams, their friendship progressed much more rapidly. Levi always had something to say, a little comment to add, on the progress of the housecleaning. He loved the new color that Erwin had helped his father put on his bedroom walls, a sort of slate blue color with white trim that gave the whole room a sort of nautical feel. Levi had informed Erwin that he’d only been to the beach once in his life, and that the beach he had gone to had had lots of pebbles instead of sand, a concept that made Erwin’s blue eyes go even rounder.

“No sand?” he’d yelped in awe. Levi had shrugged and returned to flitting around the conjured environment of the dream, which looked like the house Erwin lived in and yet not at all. All of the furnishings were unfamiliar, the wallpaper fresh and new, the colors and smells and sights altogether different. Levi seemed to have no problem maneuvering around the dreamscape, but Erwin spent most of the time in his dreams examining the little curiosities littered around the house that belonged to the both of them. “All of the beaches I’ve been to have sand!”

Levi wrinkled his nose at him, pushing open the door to the backyard confidently and skipping out into the long grass, scattering clouds of fireflies that danced up from the ground like golden stars. “It sounds itchy,” Levi confessed, cupping his hands together and peering down into his palms. Erwin came closer to examine what Levi held, a single firefly who was resting in his hands and casting gentle luminescence across their faces.

“Do you miss it?” Levi wanted to know. The firefly twitched, and, carefully, slowly, Levi nudged the firefly onto the back of Erwin’s hand. Erwin marveled at it, a surprised laugh bursting from his throat as it flew away from him, its sparks disappearing into the darkness. “Do you miss your friends?”

“Kinda,” Erwin admitted, sitting down in the grass with a soft pout. A gentle thump beside him and the rustling of the long grass indicated Levi had plopped down right beside him, a small chubby hand reaching over to pat comfortingly at his own. “But I’m really glad that I have you!” he hastened to conclude. He didn’t want Levi to feel like he was leaving him out or that he was ungrateful for his presence, because it was exactly the opposite. “We’re friends!”

“We’re friends,” Levi agreed, a laugh in his voice. “I really like being your friend!”

“Me, too,” Erwin agreed, grinning and squeezing Levi’s hand back. The stars overhead were huge and bright, and Erwin spent several dream cycles asking Levi to tell him which ones they were and what stories they held. Levi knew a bit about constellations, and those that he didn’t know, he made up. The summer started gently to pass.

* * *

 

“I wish you would spend more time with me during the day,” Erwin protested during one dream cycle in which he and Levi were pirates aboard the tree house which they had converted into a ship. Filmy blankets Levi had pulled out from one of the bedroom’s closets became their sails, billowing full with the night time wind, and they pretended that the silhouettes of the rolling mountains in the distance were the swells and crests of tidal waves.

Levi dropped his paper roll telescope, putting the game on hold for a moment as he considered Erwin’s request. He squinted at Erwin in the dark. “Why?” he asked, finally.

“Because I get bored playing by myself,” Erwin whined, a far cry from the fierce pirate Bluebeard he’d been only a moment before. “My daddy is always too busy with getting ready for work. He’s a teacher at a college, you know.”

“You told me,” Levi replied. “I guess I could,” he said, uncertainly, unsurely. “If you wanted me to so badly.”

“Oh!” Erwin understood Levi’s reluctance. “Make sure to ask your mommy if you can play with me during the day, too!” he suggested, sure that this was the cause for Levi’s hesitation. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble!”

“I’ll ask her tonight,” Levi announced firmly, and by the time the dream cycle was over and Erwin had woken up to the smell of sizzling bacon in the breakfast pan, he was vibrating with excitement at the possibility of getting even more playtime with Levi.

He waited, and waited, and waited some more, but when lunchtime and snack time and then eventually dinnertime had come and gone, he resolved himself to reading some more of Levi’s journal in the living room while his father watched the evening news. “September 29, 2007. Mommy says I should always wear a jacket when I go outside because it is getting cold, otherwise these little icky things called germs will make me get sick. I do not like being sick! That’s when Mommy makes me take medicine and it does not taste good.”

Erwin frowned. Levi’s writing made him miss his own mommy sorely. Whenever he’d gotten sick, his mother had let him stay home from school, her cool hand stroking the damp hair away from his feverish forehead while she spooned warm chicken soup into his mouth and let him watch cartoons in his pajamas.

Catching Erwin’s frown, his father patted him lightly on the back. “What’s wrong, buddy?” he asked, smiling benevolently down at Erwin.

“I miss my friends,” Erwin pouted, letting Levi’s journal fall closed on his lap. “I miss Mommy.”

Erwin’s father stiffened almost imperceptibly before he continued patting his son’s back and rubbing it in soothing circles. “I know, I know,” he murmured, blinking hard at the television screen in an attempt to ward away the tears that threatened to swamp over his vision. “I miss her a lot, too, and I’m sure your friends are missing you just as much.”

“Maybe,” Erwin mumbled. An idea flitted into his mind, placed there quickly with ghostly fingers. “Hey,” he said, the idea forming faster and solidifying. “Can I invite a friend over to play?”

His father was confused. “A friend?” he asked, faintly. “Erwin, that would be a very far trip for your friends to take to come and visit you –“

“No, no,” Erwin waved away the notion impatiently. “A new friend.”

“You’ve made a new friend?” His father looked, if possible, even more confused. “The nearest neighbors aren’t that close, and –“

“Levi!” Erwin announced, waving the journal in front of his father’s face. “Can Levi come over and play?”

“You know who Levi –“ Erwin’s father cut himself off, studying his son’s bright and earnest face carefully. “Ah. He’s your friend, then, is he?” He had noticed Erwin and the journal had been all but inseparable as of late, and was careful to omit the word ‘imaginary’ from his question. It was a rather common coping mechanism in young children adjusting to a drastic new change in their lives, and was no real cause for concern. It might even do Erwin some good, and, reassured by this rationale, Erwin’s father began to smile again as Erwin nodded eagerly in response.

“He’s my friend! My new friend,” Erwin clarified. “Please, Daddy? Please can he come over?”

“Alright, then, I don’t see why not,” his father said, smiling and ruffling his son’s hair. Yes, he thought to himself as he carried a sleeping Erwin up the stairs not even an hour later to tuck him into bed. Having a friend, even imaginary, would be good for Erwin, and he was sure that Levi would disappear by the time the school year rolled around and Erwin started making real friends of his own. But, for the meantime, this would do. This would be more than perfect.

* * *

 

Erwin woke up the next morning to find the sun streaming in through the glass windows, birds chirping outside, and Levi sprawled out on his stomach on the other half of his bed. He gasped in utter delight, rubbing his eyes hard with his hands to make sure that he wasn’t still dreaming.

“Levi!” he crowed, grinning. Levi looked at him, tearing his eyes away from the Harry Potter book he was reading. He had removed Erwin’s bookmark, but Erwin wouldn’t be angry at him for that. Levi was here, he was really here, and when Erwin reached over to poke at Levi’s shoulder, he was delighted to find that Levi was real. “You really came!”

“I really did,” Levi said, finally returning a small smile of his own as he slotted the bookmark back into the pages and closing the book before depositing it on the nightstand.

“Are you hungry? Do you want to have breakfast?” Erwin asked, unable to keep the smile from his face as he leapt from bed and ran to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. Levi trailed behind him, watching as Erwin hurriedly squirted a dollop of toothpaste onto his brush and began to brush his teeth vigorously. “Whad do oo wanna do firs?” Erwin asked, through a mouthful of foam.

“Let’s have breakfast first,” Levi suggested, rubbing at his stomach through his purple shirt. “What do you like to eat?”

“We can have cereal,” Erwin announced proudly, spitting his mouthful of foam into the sink and rinsing it down the drain. “Do you like Coco Puffs?”

“Yes!” Levi exclaimed back, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “I love Coco Puffs!”

Their footsteps pittered quickly down the stairs, and Erwin nearly ran into his father’s legs as he skidded into the kitchen.

“Where’s the fire, kiddo?” his father asked, grinning and reaching down to ruffle Erwin’s hair. “You hungry?”

“This is Levi,” Erwin announced proudly, pointing over to Levi, who stood in the doorway of the kitchen, hanging back uncertainly. “My friend, Levi.”

“Ah.” Erwin’s father looked over to the empty doorway. “Hello, Levi,” he said, playing along and waving. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Levi waved back, and pleased that his father and new friend seemed to be getting on well, Erwin hurriedly pushed a kitchen chair over to the counter and clambered on top of it to get to the Coco Puffs that his father put away in a top cabinet.

“Levi’s going to eat breakfast with me,” Erwin announced, and his father only nodded and smiled as Erwin pulled down two bowls and poured heaping servings of Coco Puffs into each one. Splashes of milk followed, some sloshing over the counter, and Erwin’s father only sighed in a sort of long-suffering fashion as he wiped up the milk and watched his son set the table and pull out a chair for his new friend.

Erwin chattered on throughout his meal, his mouth full of Coco Puffs and spitting chocolate-colored milk across the table with every word, but Levi ate his Coco Puffs solemnly, almost contemplatively, spooning up four or five puffs in every bite. Once both his and Levi’s bowls were empty, Erwin slurping up the last dregs of sugary milk at the bottom, he reached over to take Levi’s hand and drag him outside to begin playtime.

Erwin’s father plopped down in the seat Levi had recently vacated, frowning at the soggy cereal, and began to eat. No sense in it going to waste.


	6. Chapter 6

With Levi constantly by his side, Erwin was able to keep the loneliness at bay. Levi stayed with him all throughout the day, reappearing in his dreams so that their playtime never ended. Erwin began to forget the raw hurt and pain in his heart that had lingered there ever since his father had told him they’d be moving across the country, and slowly the faces of his friends began to dissolve in favor of long afternoons spent laughing and playing pretend with the friend who’d come to him in his time of need.

Levi was never tired or bored, and his mother didn’t seem to mind letting him come over to play every day. The summer began to become something like an eternal sleepover, and Erwin had never been more excited for the sun to go down. His father would let him and Levi camp outside on particularly warm nights under a set of stained towels pitched up on a clothesline, and Levi would grab hold of the flashlight and make shadow puppets with his hands, cast against the white towels. The nearest neighbors were far away, and Erwin’s father wouldn’t object to them being loud in their games and laughter.

Levi told the best ghost stories, too, really spooky ones with large gestures and sound effects that sent shivers crawling up Erwin’s spine. He was glad that Levi was there to cuddle up beside him in the large sleeping bag his father had dug out from a pile of their old belongings.

“How come your stories are so scary?” Erwin asked Levi one night, pouting and burying his face in the crook of Levi’s small neck, clinging to the other boy like a barnacle. “They’re scarier than the stuff on late late TV!”

Levi shrugged, patting Erwin’s hand comfortingly with his own chubby fingers. “I’m a good pretender,” he peeped back, clicking off the flashlight. The backyard went dark around them, and Erwin tried not to think too much into the crackling of twigs snapping, tried not to listen too hard to the wind whistling through the topmost branches of the oak tree. “Are you really very scared?” he asked, and Erwin clung to the familiarity of Levi’s voice like a life jacket.

“I really am,” he admitted, shivering despite the summer heat. Levi seemed unaffected by it, and didn’t even make any moves to push Erwin off him. “Can you please tell me a happy story?”

“A happy story?” Levi thought hard about this for a moment. “I don’t know any good stories.”

Erwin gasped. “No, you do!” he insisted, poking Levi in the arm. “You tell me about the stars all the time. Did your mommy tell you those stories?”

“She did,” Levi agreed, rolling over to look up at the sky and pointing up into a random quadrant. The house was lodged firmly in the New England countryside, and there was no light pollution like there had been in San Francisco; Erwin looked to where Levi’s finger was indicating, eyes widening as he took it in. The stars were large, bright, twinkling at him in a way he’d never seen before. “Do you think your mommy is there?” Levi asked him, letting his hand fall back to his side with a soft thump. “My mommy said dead people become stars.”

Erwin shuddered at the thought, and the stars, once so inviting and comforting and sparkly, became menacing slits in the dark blanket of the sky for the ghosts of Levi’s stories to look through. He pulled the top of the sleeping bag up over his head, ignoring the way he was sweating and starting to suffocate inside the small area, and closed his eyes tight, hoping that maybe Levi would fall asleep, too. It was nice to know that his mommy might have been looking out for him from above, but the thought that every single pinprick might have been someone long gone sent tingles up his spine.

Levi reached beneath the sleeping bag to shake at his shoulder. “Look, Erwin!” he exclaimed. “Come look.” Reluctantly, Erwin wriggled out of his hiding place.

“Oh!” he gasped, fear forgotten and replaced with abject delight quickly as he watched the fireflies rising up in softly glowing bubbles, a gentle hum filtering through the air around them as the fireflies flitted around them. A few landed on the back of Erwin’s hand, one landing on the tip of Levi’s nose, and their squeals of laughter carried on all throughout the small hours of the night as the fireflies rose and fell and chirped around them.

* * *

“Hey, Levi,” Erwin mumbled, his eyelids growing heavy, his head pillowed on Levi’s chest. Levi didn’t complain about the extra weight, and one of his hands was patting comfortingly at Erwin’s back, soothing. It reminded Erwin of his mother, a soft memory of tenderness that had nothing to do with the memories of sickness and terror that had been his last ones of her.

“What?” Levi asked, his voice muffled, like he was getting tired, too.

“Tell me a bedtime story.”

“Aren’t you tired enough already?” Levi asked, but he sighed good-naturedly, and Erwin knew he was going to agree. He grinned, tiredly, gleefully, listening to the rhythmic pulse of Levi’s heart in his chest as Levi cleared his throat and began to speak.

“That star over there,” – Levi pointed up to the dark sky with one hand, but Erwin did not turn to look – “it’s named Levi, too.”

“Oh?” A niggling worm of unease crawled into the pit of Erwin’s belly, but he was far too tired and far too comfortable to examine it further, and he brushed it away with mild annoyance. “What does Levi do?”

“The star named Levi came down from heaven to be friends with a little boy who was sad,” Levi mumbled, his voice heavy with an emotion that Erwin couldn’t quite understand.

“Was the little boy’s name Erwin?” Erwin wanted to know. He was already drifting off, and he struggled to stay awake long enough to hear Levi’s answer.

“It was,” Levi agreed, and Erwin fell asleep with Levi’s reply echoing in his ears.

* * *

 

Erwin’s father came to wake up Erwin the next morning. Erwin was curled up in the sleeping bag, his golden hair tousled over his forehead, cuddling an old stuffed bear that his father recognized as one he’d bought for Erwin’s mother during her stay in the hospital. It had sat on her dresser in the hospital, first for days, then for weeks, then for months, its fur growing ragged and its glossy eyes going dusty as it had taken in death and despair with equal measure.

Erwin’s father tutted in mild annoyance; where had Erwin even gotten this? He wondered to himself as he tugged it out of his son’s limp grasp and sat down heavily beside the sleeping bag to examine it. He thought he’d thrown it away a long time ago, unable to look at the cheerful honey color of its fur or the fading pink ribbon tied around its neck. Yet here it was, and Erwin was stirring already.

Erwin’s father forced a smile onto his face, one that made his teeth ache.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, grinning as Erwin blinked sleepily up at him. “Did you sleep well?”

Erwin yawned, propping himself up and rubbing at his eyes with his other hand. “Yeah,” he said, smiling dazedly up at his father. The air was already shimmering with summer heat. “Levi told me that Mommy is in the stars, watching me.”

“Did he?” Erwin’s father asked, chuckling as he helped Erwin up and instructed him to go and brush his teeth before having breakfast. “This Levi certainly knows a lot, doesn’t he?”

Erwin nodded, skipping happily into the house to wash up. Erwin’s father looked at the stuffed bear for a few moments before sighing and following Erwin into the house. He tucked the bear into an open box in the cupboard beneath the stairs to deal with another time, and shut the door firmly.


	7. Chapter 7

The summer wore on, the days long and bright, and Erwin’s skin grew golden beneath the burning sun, freckles cropping up a dusky brown on his cheeks. Mike and Zoey and Rosso the dog in his old apartment building faded away into a soft blur of his memory, replaced firmly with the here and now of Levi. They did everything together; Erwin would insist that his father set an extra plate at the dinner table for his new friend, and would bring Levi to the library and the community swimming pool in town, rumbling along in the sticky back seats of the Smiths’ minivan and holding hands across the small gap between them.

Erwin’s father smiled benevolently at his son, and under Erwin’s request, smiled politely at Levi as well. In all respects, Erwin thought his father and his new best friend were getting along famously.

The weeks passed quickly, as time is prone to do when one is having fun, and before Erwin knew it, the start of the school year was looming ahead large and frightening. An uneasy feeling of nervousness bloomed in the pit of his stomach, and he tried to make the last week of summer vacation last as long as possible. His father, too, was getting ready to begin his new professorial job, spending longer and longer nights going over lectures he’d already been over hundreds of times before, and Erwin often went to bed with his father’s muttering echoing in his ears.

“I don’t want to go to school,” he grumbled to Levi one night when they were lying together in Erwin’s double bed, cuddled up together to try and ward off the slight chill that had settled into the room. Erwin had been grateful for the swirl of cool air that seemed to surround Levi at all times, when it had been the dead heat of summer, but now that summer was slowly starting to slip its brisk way into fall, Erwin burrowed further into the blankets and waited for the warmth of the cotton sheets to settle into him. “I don’t like it at all!”

“I kind of miss school,” Levi admitted, turning to peer at Erwin in the dark. Erwin’s Peter Pan night-light glowed softly across Levi’s cheek.

Erwin gasped, horrified by this admission. “Do you?” he asked, surprised. “But we have to do homework and study and read icky boring textbooks.”

Levi shrugged, his little shoulders lifting up the hem of the blanket a bit. Erwin reached out and tugged it back down, stealing his hand back away quickly; Levi was cold. “I miss it,” he repeated. “I was good at school.”

Erwin wrinkled his nose. He was an okay student, he supposed; he got satisfactory remarks on the report cards he brought home from school at the end of every quarter, and his father seemed perfectly happy with those. But, if the way Levi was talking about it was any indication, Levi had been one of those kids who always got excellents or something. Erwin was almost jealous.

“You won’t be able to come with me,” Erwin mourned, his heart skipping a beat at the thought of going to school without Levi. “We won’t even be in the same grade since you’re younger than me.”

Levi fell silent, his enthusiasm dampened, and Erwin could almost hear the other boy thinking, the cogs spinning slowly in his head as he considered the predicament they had found themselves in. Erwin knew he would make new friends quickly, but it was still scary, walking into a room where he didn’t know anyone and where all of his new classmates had probably known each other since preschool.

“I know what we could do!” Levi announced, beaming over at Erwin. Erwin felt Levi’s enthusiasm spill infectious through his veins. “You could take me with you.”

“Huh?” Erwin asked, confused; the enthusiasm began to leach away as quickly as it had come. “What do you mean?”

Levi reached out, the bed sheets rustling beneath him as he wriggled closer to Erwin. Erwin shivered in the soft chill that settled against his skin as Levi reached out to poke a finger to his chest. Levi’s hair was soft and black, inky shadows against Erwin’s chin, and his breath was cool against Erwin’s neck.

Erwin watched, wide-eyed, as Levi pressed the heel of his hand slowly against Erwin’s chest, watched breathlessly as Levi’s limbs began to sink into his skin beneath the thin flannel of his pajamas. Levi looked up at him questioningly. “What do you think?” he asked, smiling innocently up at Erwin. “I could go with you! I could help you with school and you’d never have to be lonely.”

Erwin frowned, shivering a bit; goosebumps had sprouted along his arms. “But it’s so cold,” he protested. “I don’t like being cold.”

Levi pouted, and Erwin felt guilt swamping over him almost instantly. He didn’t want Levi to be sad, or feel like he was being left behind, and he hastened to explain. “And that’s kind of weird, don’t you think?”

“What is?” Levi wanted to know, but he made no movement to retract his hand. “This?”

“Yeah,” Erwin agreed, shuddering.

“It’s like Harry Potter,” Levi said, after a while. His hand pressed further into Erwin’s chest; Erwin could no longer see Levi’s fingers, and he wondered if he was dreaming. This sort of stuff didn’t happen in television or in the movies. “It’s magic!” That was the golden word, and Erwin couldn’t help but grin at Levi’s bright smile. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“Okay,” Erwin agreed, easily. There was something nice about the thought of having Levi with him at all times, and Levi would be really helpful when it came to school. Erwin frowned as he thought about it, a mix of unpleasant thoughts and the chilly feeling of Levi slowly dissolving into him. Hopefully Levi was good at language arts, he hoped with all his heart. Erwin had never been much of one for reading comprehension.


	8. Chapter 8

It took a few days to get used to Levi, the ethereal hum and vibration of him lodged somewhere deep in Erwin’s bones to spill excitement and thoughts directly into Erwin’s bloodstream. He looked at things in two sets of ways, and Levi’s ideas slowly blurred into his own, until it was impossible to tell them apart. Levi had a brilliant way of looking at the world that Erwin never would have considered before.

That, and Erwin was never alone, just as Levi had promised. School had started up, and there was a gentle nip in the air that indicated that autumn was on its way in, and though Erwin was slowly but surely making friends, slowly but surely breaking through the cliques that had already formed between old classmates, he never lacked for conversation. Levi was plenty conversation enough, and Erwin loved hearing Levi’s thoughts on their classmates and the books they were reading for language arts. He could let his imagination run wild and creative with Levi, and his teachers had already gently scolded him a few times for daydreaming during class. He had, in turn, scolded Levi gently for distracted him, but within a few minutes of rapt attention to whatever the teacher was writing on the board, Erwin’s attention would slip again.

Luckily for him, Levi helped him complete difficult assignments with ease, and homework was not a terrible issue. Even Erwin’s father was gladdened by this; he looked so tired after he picked Erwin up from school, yawning at the dinner table and then falling asleep in front of the television before the nine o’clock program was even on.

“You’re doing great at your long division, buddy,” Erwin’s father mumbled that night, handing back the homework paper Erwin handed to him to check, rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses and looking forlornly at the large pile of papers he still had to grade for his undergraduate seminar.

“It’s Levi,” Erwin said truthfully; Levi had whispered the answers into the shell of his ear, and he had written them down dutifully. Sure, he understood the material, but only vaguely; Levi really had a handle on it, he’d said before, but Levi had just mumbled that he’d already studied this sort of stuff and so he knew all about it.

“Ah.” Erwin’s father peered curiously at him over the rims of his glasses, squinting his eyes at Erwin. Erwin squirmed under his scrutiny, wondering if his father might be about to scold him. He knew academic integrity was a big thing with his father, and the university community in general, but was it really cheating? He wasn’t looking at anyone else’s paper or copying anyone else’s homework. “Well. It’s good that you have such a, um, nice friend to help you.”

Erwin let out a sigh of relief when it became apparent that no such scolding was forthcoming. “Yeah!” he said, beaming brightly as he packed his homework away and plopped himself down on the sofa. “Levi’s super smart.”

“That’s what your teachers say,” Erwin’s father agreed, his mind already somewhere else as he pulled the first stack of papers towards him, making a shuffling rustle on the table as he flipped to the first page and uncapped his red pen, already circling frantically away. “Good job, kiddo.”

“Levi says thank you!” Erwin piped up, but his father did not reply.

* * *

 

Autumn blew in in earnest, on gusts of chilly wind that crept brisk fingers beneath the collar of Erwin’s coat, and lingered in his chest. The cold erupted into a cold of its own, and Erwin’s father pulled triple duty as father and nurse and teacher all at once, begging another professor to take over his lectures while he stayed home and alternated between reading Erwin’s social studies textbook to him and spooning mouthfuls of cooled chicken noodle soup into Erwin’s mouth.

Erwin’s coughs rattled through his lungs, his throat hurting swollen and inflamed, and he was grateful for the tiny butterfly kisses he could feel Levi laying against the inside of his neck, a small spot of cool relief that was whisked instantaneously away with the next bout of coughing. He could hardly sleep, and it wasn’t long before a fever raged inside him.

Erwin’s father tutted as he pulled the thermometer from Erwin’s mouth. “It’s 101.5,” he pronounced, and Erwin stared blankly at him, shivering under the thick covers his father had piled on top of him. He was still cold, all the way down into his bones, but he knew that fifteen minutes later he’d be sweating out of his skin. “We probably should have planned for your flu shot earlier, hm?”

Erwin nodded miserably, blowing his nose and depositing the crumpled tissue into a small basket his father had placed on his nightstand for just such a purpose.

“Ah, well.” His father shrugged. The slope of his shoulders cast a long shadow across the room, and it seemed to swell and dance as Erwin stared at it, making him feel queasy so that he had to turn away. “Your teachers told me that almost half the class is missing because of the flu or some sort of cold. Looks like you’re not the only one, so you’re probably not missing too much.” He patted at Erwin’s leg under the covers, and Erwin twitched away from the touch. “Only thing for it is to keep taking your medicine, drink lots of fluids. Sleep a lot. There anything I can get you? Some orange juice, maybe?” He turned to look at Erwin, smiling painfully at him, and Erwin wondered if he was just imagining the way his father gritted his teeth tightly together. He shook his head mutely, and the sigh of relief that rattled through his body was not imagined by any means.

“I’m going to be downstairs grading through some papers, alright, buddy?” he said, already moving towards the door, in such a way that Erwin knew he was stating a fact rather than asking for Erwin’s permission. “Just call if you need me for anything.”

“I want Mommy,” Erwin blurted out. Levi’s words, not Erwin’s; he hadn’t been thinking of his mother, and the stricken look that crossed his father’s face made him want to snatch the words out of the air and stuff them back down his throat. The moment passed as quickly as it had come, before he could even think about snapping at Levi for the unwanted interference.

“Yeah,” Erwin’s father muttered, addressing the doorjamb, “she was always a lot better at this stuff than I am. Sorry about that. I’m doing my best.”

“I know, Dad,” Erwin croaked, and kicked off the covers, sweating, before his father’s footsteps had even faded down the hallway.

What was that? he thought to Levi, trying and failing to summon the energy to be irritated with his best friend. I didn’t want to say that.

Sorry, Levi mumbled back, and he sounded quite contrite. It was a word Erwin had learned in one of his vocabulary lists recently, and per his father’s instructions, he’d been trying to use at least five of the words in everyday conversation so that he could remember what they meant. Contrite: adj. Feeling or expressing remorse or penitence. Affected by guilt. Levi certainly sounded the second; Erwin had yet to get around to looking up what remorse and penitence were. I miss Mommy, though.

I miss my mommy, too, Erwin whispered back. He did, really, truly, missed the way her cool hand would stroke over his fevered forehead when he was sick, missed the way she would make orange juice from the concentrate cans in the freezer section of the grocery store, missed the lingering scent of her perfume on the sheets that he drew up to his chin no matter how hot he got beneath them. Sorry we can’t play.

It’s okay, Levi breathed, sounding a tiny bit worried. Please get better soon. Erwin would have responded to his entreaty, another vocabulary word, an earnest or humble request, but he was already slipping into fever dreams, his breath rattling dusty in his lungs while his father’s pen scratched feverish over papers downstairs.


	9. Chapter 9

The flu that Erwin had developed refused to abate, the fever constantly breaking and reappearing just when everyone involved thought that the illness might have finally run its course. Erwin frequently woke up in the middle of the night, soaked to the bone in a cold sweat that he couldn't shake off no matter how hard he tried, and he was forced to watch as his father's face grew gaunter, more haggard. Circles blossomed like storm clouds beneath his father's eyes as he worried and fretted over Erwin, the papers of his undergraduate students going neglected and growing dusty on the sideboard as he tried to nurse Erwin back to health.

"How are you feeling, buddy?" Erwin's father asked constantly. It had become their greeting every day whenever Erwin managed to drag himself out of bed and trudge listlessly down to the kitchen. It had replaced good morning, a phrase that would have been a blatant lie in a series of bad mornings. 

"Not good," Erwin croaked, trying not to whine too much as he spooned up the gloppy oatmeal his father set in front of him, with a worried look on his face. He swallowed his medicines dutifully before toddling back up to bed, the aches settling fiercely into his bones whenever he lay down and tried to find sleep again. 

Not good? Levi asked him on one such morning when rain beat itself frantic against the glass panes of Erwin's bedroom window. Gusts of wind howled down from the rolling mountains wreathed with fog in the distance, whistling frighteningly through the bare branches of the oak tree in the backyard and skittering dead leaves in large drifts into the gutters and into the corners of the treehouse, which creaked with every bout of ferocity the wind delivered. 

"Not good," Erwin affirmed, tossing and turning in bed, trying to find a comfortable position. "All of me hurts."

I'm sorry, Levi ventured after a moment. His tone sounded particularly sorrowful, but Erwin didn't, couldn't dwell on it. His body was wracked with shivers so fierce he thought he might shake himself out of bed, and though Levi had been the initial instigator of the thought, Erwin found himself desperately wanting his mother. 

She came to him in his dreams, now, holding out a soft, pale hand that smelled like lilies of the valley and Pond's cold cream, and Erwin always held his breath right after waking up, hoping to keep the scent in his nostrils for as long as he possibly could after the halo-wreathed form of his dead mother had long ceased to dance behind his closed eyelids.

* * *

 

Erwin could no longer recount the number of days he had been absent from school, but he knew it had been a substantial amount, and that amount added up to more than his ten fingers, and that amount was sufficient reason for his father to cancel his scheduled lectures at the university for the day to bring him to the doctor's office. 

Levi tagged along inside him, patting at his hand as it lay feverish on the door handle and assuring him that certainly everything would be alright. He was just sicker than normal because it didn't get that cold in California, and Erwin looked listlessly out the window at the way frost was tracing spiral designs on the glass, and thought that perhaps Levi was right. He usually was. He knew so much more about the area than Erwin did, and Erwin would be glad to defer to him. Defer: Put off an action to a later time; submit humbly to. It was on the week's vocabulary list, and Erwin recited it to himself, alphabetized words along with dahlia and determination. The dahlias deferred to his mother with determination. She had always loved gardening, the beds of her nails caked with a thin film of rich, dark soil, the perfume of the budding blossoms wreathing around her. 

"We're here, kiddo," his father announced, forcing a tone of joviality into his voice as the van rumbled to a stop in front of the children's hospital. He came around to open the door for Erwin, and ordinarily Erwin would have made a halfhearted joke about having a chauffeur or a butler, but he could no longer find the breath to do so. every breath came as a jab to the ribs, aching, and he sipped at the air as he tumbled out onto the frosty asphalt of the hospital's parking lot and into his father's waiting arms.

* * *

 

The metal cup of the stethoscope against his bare skin made Erwin shiver, the paper of the examination bench crackling beneath him. He could feel his father's worried gaze heavy on him, but he could not bring himself to send a reassuring gaze his father's way. He could feel the beginnings of another coughing fit rumbling in his chest, where Levi had his hands pressed lightly against his diaphragm to try to stifle it. 

"Your son has an arrhythmia," the doctor announced, and Erwin focused very hard on the dark mole the doctor had just to the left side of his nose, trying very hard not to cough. Whatever that thing was, it sounded quite serious. 

"An arrhythmia?" Erwin's father asked, sounding slightly disbelieving. 

"A murmur of the heart," the doctor explained impatiently, as though he had better things to be doing. He looped the stethoscope quickly around his neck again, snapped at his latex gloves once or twice. "Sounds like there's two heartbeats, almost."

"Two beats?" Erwin's father repeated, dazed and disbelieving. "But surely that wouldn't mean anything about his flu, would it? Or would it exacerbate his symptoms?" That was a word Erwin didn't know yet, but using context, as his teacher had emphasized, Erwin could presume that it wasn't good. 

Levi whispered in his ear that indeed it was not. Arrhythmias were not to be trifled with, Levi explained in no uncertain terms. His mom had watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy, or some other medical show slash drama. 

"Can't say," the doctor said, brusquely. "I'd like to have your child under more observation. More tests. You never know what it might be." 

"Alright," Erwin's father agreed, faintly, but Erwin had no idea what exactly these other tests entailed until a small battery of nurses came flooding through the door as though summoned. They carried clipboards and vials and large shiny needles, and they sank pinching claws into Erwin's skin. He was vaguely aware of the sounds of his crying, the taste of salt on his lips, the huffing ragged breaths running through him, but Levi drowned out his worries with his whispers, breathing that he knew what this felt like, too. That Erwin was not alone. 

Erwin took solace in Levi's reassurances. Solace: comfort or consolation in a time of distress. When the nurses finally let Erwin up and pulled away with vials of crimson tucked into their hands, Erwin found the crook of his inner arm bruising black and purple and tears shining wet in his father's eyes. 

 


	10. Chapter 10

As it turned out, more observations and more tests led to his own small cot in the pediatric ward, where the sheets smelled vaguely like lemon floor polish and the boy in the room next to him cried in the middle of the night when nurses came by to check their temperatures and heart beats. Erwin tried not to whine too much when the nurse turned to him with her mint green face mask and a small packet of syringes in her gloved hand. 

"I know, I know," she would cluck as she placed a small squishy ball shaped like a tangerine into the curve of his hand. "Be brave there, little man." The tender insides of his arms turned a dark bruised purple as the small vials of blood were pulled out of him and sent to a place downstairs he had never seen, where the nurse assured him the nice doctors were doing all they could do to figure out what was wrong with him. 

His father's worries multiplied, and Erwin couldn't help but feel a bit guilty that he was adding on to all of them. Wrinkles crossed in little lines over the thin skin of his father's face, which was starting to pull taut over the hollows of his cheeks. He sat by Erwin's bed in the afternoons, smiling weakly and going over papers his students had turned in, students in another universe that Erwin was starting to forget in favor of the weak sunlight filtering in through the dusty Venetian blinds, the buzzing of the tiny square TV propped on top of a cabinet in his hospital room, and Levi's small whispered comforts in the shell of his ear. 

_You'll be okay_ , Levi promised, in a voice that Erwin could only describe as strange. He had never heard Levi sound like this before, so sad and yet so cheerful, as though he had a terrible secret. 

_How do you know?_ Erwin whispered back, when he was sure the other little boy was fast asleep and couldn't hear, couldn't make fun of him because he still talked to friends he couldn't see. 

_Because I know what it feels like_ , Levi mumbled back, and Erwin felt a tiny gentle squeeze deep in the bones of his hand, like Levi had laced his small fingers straight through Erwin's grasp. _You don't have to be scared._

_Okay_ , Erwin agreed, and this small comfort made him feel better.

* * *

 

Erwin didn't understand the words the nurses and doctors threw around, flinging them like weapons into his father's face, but he understood that they hurt very, very much. Understood that perhaps sticks and stones could break your bones, but words could break your heart. 

The doctors had put him into a large machine and had told him to lie very still while his father's voice was piped in mechanically around the chamber and echoed straight into Erwin's mind. _Be brave, Erwin, okay? It's only for a little bit longer_. The test itself had taken more than that, but Erwin was running out of energy to complain. The hospital itself was sapping him dry, like his mother had been, and some worrisome thought planted in the back of his mind was growing fiercely even if he himself wasn't, that he'd wither away into nothing like his mother had. The monsters liked small tasty children, the monsters would come in the middle of the night with white faces, and Erwin slowly began to realize why the boy in the bed next to him sobbed in his dreams. 

"There's a fuzziness," his father tried to explain, pulling the plastic folding chair closer to Erwin's bed. He hadn't shaved in a few days, and the circles under his eyes were as dark as the bruises Erwin was sporting on the insides of his elbows. 

"A fuzziness?" Erwin asked, trying to sit up and wincing as his chest ached fiercely with the effort. He laid back in the thin pillows, trying to breathe normally, feeling Levi's small hands clasped gently over his heart like a prayer.

"A fuzziness," his father confirmed, looking at him so sorrowfully and so pitifully that Erwin had to turn his face away. His father's voice was unsteady as it continued. "And they have to take a look at it." 

"Take a look at it, how?" Erwin asked, very softly. He had a feeling he already knew the answer. Levi had told him that the doctors would put him to sleep and then they would look to see what was the problem.

But his father wasn't listening. "The doctors said it's all but a sure thing," he choked out then, and Erwin could feel the small spots of warm dampness speckling at the thin blankets drawn up over him. The boy on the other side of the room was watching them now, intently, owl-eyed, and Erwin wanted to march over and hit him, tell him that he had no right to their private sorrows. If only he wasn't so tired. 

_When you come over_ , Levi piped in then, his reedy voice growing louder every day and thankfully drowning out his father's creaking sobs, _then we can sleep for as long as we want._

_When_? Erwin asked, his eyelids already drooping and heavy. His father's mumbles were receding into the distance. 

_Soon_ , Levi promised, and if the other little boy sounded sad about Erwin's apparently upcoming visit to his house, Erwin didn't notice them.

* * *

 

The words meant nothing to him when the doctors finally came back to them, grim faced with a clipboard in their hands, reading a long diagnosis that had Erwin's father knotting the sheets nervously and had Erwin staring blankly at the ceiling, counting the number of black holes in the tiles, wondering how many holes there were in one tile and then counting across to see how many tiles were in the room itself. He had learned his multiplication tables a year or so ago, but his memory was a bit rusty, and maybe the number of tiles in the corridors was something completely different, and his head grew dizzy with the thought of how many corridors and how many wards must be in this hospital, and the sheer, staggering number of how many holes and tiles that was. 

Osteosarcoma. It had a nasty taste in his mouth, and the doctors were frowning as though they didn't fully understand why this was happening. He surely didn't understand what was happening, only that it was something very, very bad, that there was fuzziness in his bones where there should only have been strong, clear lines of bone. 

_Soon_ , Levi whispered into the shell of his ear, and Erwin looked to his father for guidance. Surely he would know what to do. 

But his father was staring at the doctors, shell shocked, even after the doctors murmured things about how there was treatment, there was a decent chance of long term survival, and Erwin closed his eyes and curled up into a small ball that only contained himself and Levi. 

_Will it hurt?_ he asked, after a moment, pondering in some small, disbelieving way the idea of what it would be like. Osteosarcoma. Monsters knitted right into his bones. 

_A little bit_ , Levi said, after a long pause. _But I'll be with you, so it won't be so bad._

Erwin wanted to ask how Levi knew all the answers, but he was far too tired to think about anything important, and he fell asleep almost immediately after the doctors left, saying something about they'd seen a case just like this not too long ago. They knew what to do, have no fear. 

_Don't be afraid_ , Levi murmured as Erwin drifted off again.

_ I'm not. _

 


	11. Chapter 11

Erwin could hardly remember what fresh air tasted like. The leaves on the trees outside his hospital room window turned red, then brown, then drifted to the ground to leave the branches black against the sky. The little boy he'd once shared the room with had gone away, Erwin didn't know where, and the bed sat blank and empty across the room. Levi had taken to sitting there, the milky winter light shining right through him, and Erwin watched him dreamily as the minutes turned into hours. 

The monitors and machines beeped irritatingly, and his eyes followed the liquid dripping from a plastic bag into tubes. 

The liquid made him dizzy, made him sleepy, and he was grateful for the long hours Levi spent with him, their small hands laced together. 

"Soon," Levi mumbled, looking up at Erwin almost hopefully. 

"Soon?" Erwin mumbled sleepily, stifling a yawn, his ribs protesting at the stretch. He was starting to struggle for breath with every passing day, and Levi lay his head down on Erwin's chest as though listening for his heartbeat. "Soon what?" 

But Levi wouldn't tell him. "Soon," he repeated softly, curling up contentedly beside Erwin in the small bed. A chill ran lightly through Erwin's arm, but he didn't pull away. His father was downstairs, getting something to eat in the hospital canteen, and Erwin stared up at the ceiling blankly, listening to the machines and the rustle of the sheets as Levi shifted to a more comfortable position next to him.

* * *

 

"Look. You can see it." 

Erwin's eyes opened, flicking lightly around the corners of the room. Levi was gone, and a few doctors were murmuring softly over a folder at the end of his bed, apparently without realizing he'd woken up. His father was nowhere to be seen. 

"What should we do?" one of the doctors asked. "It's not responding. The nearest pediatric-focused oncology department is nowhere near here." 

The doctor standing closest to Erwin pinched at the bridge of his nose, looking frustrated and very, very tired. He glanced over at Erwin, and Erwin hastily closed his eyes, hoping they hadn't caught him peeking. Whatever they were discussing, it was certainly serious, and he was sure they weren't words for him. 

"Nothing to do but wait," someone else said, with an air of finality that Erwin's father sometimes used when he was didn't want to answer anymore questions. "We can keep trying, but it's metastasized too far too fast." 

"Who should tell him?" This voice was young, female, with rounded vowels that reminded Erwin vaguely of his mother before she'd become a stranger. 

"Tell me what?" 

His father's voice came from the direction of the doorway, and Erwin closed his eyes tighter, holding his breath to listen better. 

"Tell me what?" his father demanded, more insistently, and then there was a quiet shuffling of clothes and footsteps on the tile as the doctors left the room. A muffled conversation in the hallway. Noises of confusion, and then his father starting to cry. It was an ugly sound, and Erwin buried his head underneath the covers, forgetting to pretend to be asleep, so he wouldn't have to hear it. 

"Shh, shh," Levi murmured softly, and Erwin jumped in surprise, the needle in the back of his hand stinging. "Just me."

The other boy had squirreled himself away beneath the covers, and Erwin's breath slowly startled to settle. 

Levi had been growing more solid with every passing day, his hands soft against Erwin's, and Erwin let Levi hug him tightly as he tried not to think about his father crying outside. Much to his surprise, tears built up in his eyes and trickled down his cheeks before he could stop them. 

"It'll be okay," Levi promised. "It will be like every day is Christmas." And then, with a peek up at Erwin, "You...you do like Christmas, don't you? We can spend it together always."

"I love Christmas," Erwin mumbled, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand. A pause. After a moment, he asked, "Will Santa bring me presents?" 

Levi frowned for a moment before smoothing it away again. "Maybe," he said, looking as though he was thinking very hard. Erwin wondered if maybe Santa hadn't been bringing Levi presents because Levi didn't believe in Santa; his father had told him there were people like that. "Yeah. Maybe." 

"Okay," Erwin replied, still unsure. Christmas with Levi didn't sound too bad, and it would be even better if his father would stop crying and tell Erwin that everything was okay. 

"When do you want to go?" Levi wanted to know. 

"Go? Go where?" Erwin asked. Levi's dark hair tickled at his cheek. "Are we going on an adventure?"

"Something like that," Levi agreed. 

"I'm too tired for adventures," Erwin pouted, sorely wishing he'd been the one to leave the hospital instead of the other little boy whose bed still remained empty in the other half of the room. "Can't we play here?" 

"But it's a really cool adventure," Levi promised, looking up at Erwin with childish hope. Erwin could hardly bring himself to say no. "Say you'll come soon, won't you?" 

"Okay," Erwin whispered, sticking out his pinky for a promise. "Promise." 

Levi's hand was warm in his own.

* * *

 

The scans they'd shown him were printed in slate and shocking bright white. 

"I'm sorry, Mr. Smith," the one doctor said to him, her eyebrows creased with compassion, and he could hardly see the photographs through the glossy fog in his eyes. "We're so, so very sorry." 

He was sure they were. They made all the right noises and offered all the right things, but the hospital could hardly offer him a replacement for his wife and his son. At the very least, erwin would be with his mother again, he rationalized to himself. Little boys needed their mothers, too. 

Erwin's rib cage was spattered with grey, and if he squinted and tilted his head to the side just a bit, he thought it looked like perhaps a pair of hands draped neatly over the blotch of white that was supposed to be Erwin's heart. 

He leaned heavily against the wall, repeating again and again that he needed some time, that he needed more time, until the doctors and nurses dispersed quietly and the only sound was the soft beeping of the machines in the room behind him. 

He buried his head in the crook of his arms, shoulders shaking, until the beeping turned to a constant line of sound.

* * *

 

Levi looked overjoyed when Erwin stood up and walked over to the window, grabbing Levi's hand in his own. 

It was starting to snow outside, but Levi was warm. 

"Are you ready to go, then?" Levi asked. "Your mom is waiting for us." 

"My mom?" Erwin asked, turning to Levi with surprise. Levi nodded. 

"She's only downstairs," he said, and Erwin's heart leapt with hope as he hurried out of the room, dragging Levi behind him. 

His father was sitting in the corridor, holding some photographs. Erwin squinted at them, but couldn't make anything out. He turned to look at Levi, who had run ahead and was waiting at the end of the hall. 

"Dad?" he asked, softly. "Dad?" 

His father didn't look up. He looked at Levi again; Levi was starting to look a little impatient. 

"Dad," he whispered, even though there was no one else. "I'm going to see Mom and it'll be Christmas all the time. Levi promised." 

His father didn't respond. Erwin frowned, but the unease cleared when a snore burst from his father's chest. Oh, he was just asleep. Erwin could come back and visit him anytime, but he had been so tired for so long. It seemed better to just let him sleep. 

"Okay, Dad," Erwin whispered as he tiptoed off to the end of the hall to join Levi. "I love you." 

Levi's hand was reassuring and solid in his own, and Erwin let Levi pull him through the halls and down the stairs. 

A woman with strawberry blonde hair was sitting in the waiting room, and Erwin's heart leapt as she turned to look at him with a smile through the glass doors that separated the waiting room from the main hospital. 

"Are you ready?" Levi asked, looking up at Erwin from beside him, and Erwin gripped Levi's hand tighter, his heart bubbling over with happiness and excitement. 

"I am," he agreed, and he pulled Levi through the door. 


End file.
